Cooler Heads Digest

In the News

The Greenhouse Protection Racket
Marlo Lewis, Pajamas Media, 9 July 2010

Climate Change: A Collective Flight from Reality
Roger Helmer, Washington Times, 9 July 2010

Markets, Not Social Values, Should Determine Price of Electricity
William Yeatman & Amy Oliver Cooke, Denver Daily News, 9 July 2010

Climate Clique Looks after Its Own
Gerald Warner, Daily Telegraph, 8 July 2010

Austerity Green: EU Fatigue for Renewables
Matthew Sinclair, Master Resource.org, 7 July 2010

Oil Sands Push Tests U.S.-Canada Ties
Phred Dvorak & Edward Welsch, Wall Street Journal, 7 July 2010

Putting Wind Power into Perspective
Greg Pollowitz, Planet Gore, 7 July 2010

Maryland’s Smart Grid Fiasco
William Yeatman, Baltimore Sun, 5 July 2010

News You Can Use

Hefty Cost of Fuel Switching

Proponents of a carbon tax often claim that natural gas is a ready alternative to coal for the generation of electricity, but according to a new study by the American Public Power Association, the fuel switch would cost $680 billion.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Energy Rationers Still Can’t Get Their Act Together

The majority staff of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee have spent the week putting together an energy-rationing package to bring to the floor, which Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) planned to do next week.  But it has already been reported that the package won’t be ready by next week.  That is apparently because decisions on some key issues remain to be made.  This is not news.  The Democratic majority have been trying to put something together that can get 60 votes since last fall.

First, it was the Kerry-Boxer bill, which was similar to the Waxman-Markey bill passed by the House on 26th June 2009 by a 219-212 vote.  Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) moved that bill out of her Environment and Public Works Committee last November before the UN global warming pow-wow in Copenhagen.  But the public’s overwhelmingly negative reaction to Waxman-Markey meant that it was dead in the Senate.

Then Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) spent months working with Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on an alternative described as less ambitious and capable of attracting bi-partisan support.  Graham eventually dropped out, most likely because of the blowback against him in South Carolina, and Kerry and Lieberman finally introduced their bill in May.  Like Kerry-Boxer, the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act has no chance of gaining the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate.  I doubt that it could get 50 votes.

That leaves it up to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.  In the spring of 2009, Bingaman passed several measures out of his committee with the support of ranking Republican Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).  These include a renewable standard for electric utilities, new building energy efficiency standards based on California’s, and a variety of other lesser “clean energy” provisions.  That is reportedly the basis of the package now being put together.  Like most other big bills brought to the Senate (and House) floor these days, the bill is being put together in secret, so it’s hard to find out what might be in it.  However, it has been reported that it does not contain a cap-and-trade scheme or mandatory targets and timetables to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The obstacle remains how to get the 60 votes to invoke cloture and pass the bill.  The other major decision is whether to attach it to a bill addressing BP’s Gulf oil leak disaster or to replace the House version of Waxman-Markey.  If the latter, the Senate would then send H. R. 2454 back to the House in hopes of adding cap-and-trade in a House-Senate conference committee and passing it in a lame duck session after the November elections.

The fact that Senate Democrats have not been able to take the first step toward enacting energy-rationing legislation in the past year and still seem stymied is good news for American consumers, workers, and taxpayers.  With any luck, the Senate will not pass anything this year.  Even if it does, it’s not clear that the House would go along.

Climategate Update

Another Week, Another Whitewash

Only days after the Penn State University released its whitewash report on Professor Michael Mann’s involvement in the Climategate (which we reported on last week), a supposedly blue-ribbon panel did the same for University of East Anglia’s Phil Jones, the central figure in the scandal. Incredibly, the Muir Russell panel failed to address climate science, and lead investigators didn’t even bother to attend interviews of Jones. Needless to say, “This is another example of the establishment circling the wagons and defending their position,” as CEI’s Myron Ebell told the New York Times.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.

In the News

The All-American Light Bulb Dims, as Freedom Flickers
Deroy Murdock, National Review, 2 July 2010

A Wellspring of Politics, Not Science
William O’ Keefe, Washington Times, 2 July 2010

Running out of Little Green Countries
Chris Horner, AmSpecBlog, 1 July 2010

Blowout Prevention Act Would Blow Out Domestic Production
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 1 July 2010

The Windsurfer’s Windfall
Max Brindle, American Spectator, 29 June 2010

Everyone Knows…Except the Experts
Henry Payne, Planet Gore, 29 June 2010

They Loved BP & Enron
Robert Bradley, MasterResource.org, 28 June 2010

Is Obama Putting Ideology above Science?
Detroit News editorial, 27 June 2010

News You Can Use

Price Tag of Obama’s Moratorium

According to a new analysis by the Heritage Foundation, President Barack Obama’s offshore oil ban, if extended through 2035, would:

• Reduce GDP by $5.5 trillion
• Reduce the average consumption expenditures for a family of four by $2,381 per year (and exceeds $4,000 in 2035)
• Reduce job growth by more than 1 million jobs by 2015 and more than 1.5 million jobs by 2030

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

White House Convenes Climate Meeting

Twenty-three Senators finally met with President Barack Obama Tuesday morning to discuss how to move forward with energy-rationing legislation.  Darren Samuelsohn and Coral Davenport reported in Politico that the President made it clear that he wants the Senate to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions, but that he recognizes that it may be necessary to settle for something much more modest than the House Waxman-Markey bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has indicated that he still wants the Senate to take up energy-rationing legislation when Senators return from the Fourth of July recess on 12th July.  Everything else remains to be decided.  First is the question of whether energy-rationing provisions should be attached to a bill to address BP’s Gulf oil leak or whether it should be a stand-alone bill.  If it is a stand-alone bill, then it will probably be brought to the floor as H. R. 2454, the Waxman-Markey bill which the House passed by a 219 to 212 vote on 26th June 2009.  That could keep alive the possibility of calling a conference committee and then trying to pass something in a lame duck session after the election.

What might be included in a Senate anti-energy package is still up in the air.

One Possibility:  Utility-only Energy Rationing

One possibility that has been floated and was reportedly suggested by Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Me.) at the meeting with President Obama is a cap-and-trade scheme that covers electric utilities only.  I’m not sure why a utilities-only cap-and-trade scheme would be any easier to pass than an economy-wide one, since everyone understands that it would only be the first step and that for the first ten or fifteen years an economy-wide cap-and-trade really only hits coal.

Another Possibility: Bingaman’s Anti-energy Bill

Another possibility that has been the most likely for a couple months is that the Senate will take up the anti-energy provisions passed out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee last year.  These include a renewable standard for utilities, new building energy efficiency standards modeled on California’s, and several other “clean energy” provisions.  If that is the way Reid decides to go, then it will put Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), the Chairman of the Committee, in charge of the legislation.

That makes sense for several reasons.  First, Bingaman is not Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), a legislative lightweight who is not much more popular with Senate Democrats than he is with Republicans.  Nor is he Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who is even more of a lightweight than Kerry.  Second, Bingaman passed these provisions out of his committee with the support of the ranking Republican, Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), so he starts with Republican support and has every prospect of gaining more.  And third, Bingaman’s package does not put a price on CO2 emissions.  This makes it much harder to build public opposition to it as an energy tax.

The death of Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) complicates the situation.  Majority Leader Reid is short one vote until a successor is appointed by West Virginia’s Governor, Joe Manchin.  But Reid might be worse off after a new Senator is appointed.  That’s because Manchin is the most ferocious opponent of anti-coal policies among high-ranking elected Democrats.

Across the States

What Is EPA Doing in West Virginia?

On April 1^st, the Environmental Protection Agency promulgated new Clean Water Act regulations for the discharge of conductivity (i.e., salinity) from surface coal mining operations in West Virginia. The regulations were established in order to protect the Mayfly, a short-lived insect that isn’t even an endangered species. At the press conference to unveil the new standards, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson conceded that the new regulations were stringent enough to outlaw mountain top removal mining. Last week, however, the EPA notified Arch Coal Inc.’s Coal-Mac subsidiary that its MTR project at the Pine Creek Surface Mine in Logan County, West Virginia, would receive a Clean Water Act permit. EPA’s coal crackdown engendered a bipartisan rebuke from almost every state and federal politician in West Virginia, so perhaps the EPA is signaling that it intends to be flexible. Tellingly, the EPA did not make the permit approval public.

ClimateGate Update

Mann Exonerated by Penn State Panel Designed To Exonerate Mann

To the surprise of no one, Professor Michael Mann, (creator of the debunked Hockey Stick global temperature reconstruction), was cleared by a Penn State University investigation prompted by Mann’s involvement in the ClimateGate scandal. PSU initiated the investigation in November, 2009, at the behest of alumni. It appointed a panel and tasked it with answering these questions:

I. Did Mann engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly: any actions with the intent to suppress or falsify data?;
2. any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4,as suggested by Phil Jones?;
3. any misuse of privileged or confidential information available to you in your capacity as an academic scholar?;
4. any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities?

In January, the panel exonerated Mann on the first three charges. After learning of PSU’s decision, Dr. Richard Lindzen, the Alfred Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told PSU investigators, “It’s thoroughly amazing. I mean these are issues that he explicitly stated in the emails. I’m wondering what’s going on?” Hear, hear!

That January ruling left little doubt that the “investigation” was a showcase to clear Mann, even though the panel decided that the fourth charge necessitated further inquiry, the results of which were released yesterday. As CEI’s Myron Ebell told the New York Times, “It’s no surprise that it’s a whitewash of Dr. Mann’s misconduct, because it was designed to be a whitewash.”

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.

In the News

EU Countries Slashing Green Budgets
Patrice Hill, Washington Times, 25 June 2010

Markets Should Drive Colorado Energy Industry
William Yeatman & Amy Oliver Cooke, Denver Business Journal, 25 June 2010

Can a Carbon Cap Pass?
Myron Ebell, Politico, 25 June 2010

Climate Policy Not as Simple as Gore Thinks
Jim Manzi, The New Republic, 24 June 2010

Paul McCartney Compares Climate Skeptics to Holocaust Deniers
Josh Miller, FoxNews.com, 24 June 2010

A New Low for Science-the Black List
Fran Smith, GlobalWarming.org, 23 June 2010

Obama’s BP Time
Michael Lynch, MasterResource.org, 23 June 2010

Anti-Climate Law Initiative Qualifies for November Ballot
Dennis Theriault, San Jose Mercury News, 23 June 2010

Crude Stereotypes
Matt Purple, Spectator, 21 June 2010

News You Can Use

EPA Exposes Energy Independence Myth

Senator John Kerry claims that his cap-and-trade bill, the American Power Act, would make the U.S. “energy independent,” but according to the EPA’s economic analysis, the bill would raise gasoline prices to $5.00 a gallon in 2050 yet would leave U.S. petroleum consumption about where it is today.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

President Cancels Climate Meeting with Senators

President Barack Obama had to cancel his Wednesday morning meeting with a bipartisan group of Senators to discuss the need to pass energy-rationing legislation because he had to talk with General Stanley McChrystal before firing him as head of our Afghan campaign.  The meeting has not yet been rescheduled.

Despite Cancellation, Democratic Senators “Inspired”

Senate Democrats did go ahead on Thursday with their third meeting in three weeks to discuss how to proceed to the floor in July with an energy-rationing package.  Reporters talking to Senators as they came out of the meeting were greeted with uniformly glowing accounts of what happened at the meeting.

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) told The Hill: “This was without doubt one of the most motivating, energized, and even inspirational caucuses that I’ve been part of since I’ve been here in the Senate in 26 years.”

Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) chimed in that the meeting had been “absolutely thrilling.”  Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was also over the moon: “A number of senators said this was the best caucus they’ve ever attended.  It was really very, very powerful. It was inspirational, quite frankly.”

So what did Senate Democrats decide to do?  They decided to include energy-rationing provisions in a bill to punish BP and the oil industry for BP’s Gulf oil leak.  This would force Republicans opposed to energy rationing to take a very difficult vote against the BP spill bill.

This strategy was first reported by Politico three weeks ago (which I discussed in the Digest here), so I’m not sure what made the meeting so exciting.  Perhaps they finally agreed on what provisions to include in the package?  No, they reported no progress on deciding the actual contents of the legislation.

My suspicion is that Senate Democrats, with no substantive progress to show for their three meetings, decided that they had to make a public show of progress.  Describing the meeting as exciting, inspiring, and thrilling was the best they could come up with.  They can try to hide it, but the fact is that the Good Bus Cap-n-Tax has run out of gas and is slowing to a stop.

The question is whether the Democrats’ huge Senate majority (plus a few Republicans) will be able to pass some modest package of regulations and mandates that will raise energy prices and cripple the economy.

Across the States

Marlo Lewis, from GlobalWarming.org

Louisiana Judge Overturns Obama’s Drilling Ban

On Wednesday, Judge Martin Feldman of the Eastern Louisiana District Court lifted the Obama administration’s six-month moratorium on all oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in waters over 500 feet in depth. Feldman held  that the moratorium was “arbitrary and capricious” and would do “irreparable harm” to businesses that own, operate, and service vessels used to support offshore drilling – an industry critical to the region’s economy. Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar imposed the moratorium on May 28 in response to the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill.

Around the World

Chris Horner, from Pajamas Media

Spanish Green Jobs Critic Receives Bomb Threat

Spain’s Dr. Gabriel Calzada-the author of a damning study concluding that Spain’s “green jobs” energy program has been a catastrophic economic failure-was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic. The bomb threat is just the latest intimidation Dr. Calzada has faced since releasing his report and following up with articles in Expansion. A minister from Spain’s Socialist government called the rector of King Juan Carlos University-Dr. Calzada’s employer-seeking Calzada’s ouster. Calzada was not fired, but he was stripped of half of his classes at the university. My book, Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America,  details the Spanish “green jobs” disaster uncovered by Dr. Calzada, plus similar “green” economic calamities occurring in Germany and Denmark-also programs Obama has praised-as well as in Italy and elsewhere.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.

In the News

He Blinded Me with Science
Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online, 18 June 2010

Obama’s Energy Push Is Divorced from Reality
Charles Krauthammer, Investor’s Business Daily, 18 June 2010

The Primary Problems with Wind Power
Jerry Graf, MasterResource.org, 17 June 2010

Senate Liberals Threaten Opposition to an Anti-Energy Bill
Alexander Bolton, The Hill, 17 June 2010

The Oilers vs. The Stealer
George Neumayr, American Spectator, 17 June 2010

Sen. Kerry’s Keen Sense of Euro Green Scene
Chris Horner, Planet Gore, 16 June 2010

Brava, Sen. Murkowski
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 14 June 2010

The Senate’s Global Warming Circus
Iain Murray, Washington Times, 14 June 2010

Movie Star Misses Mark on Mining
William Yeatman, Human Events, 14 June 2010

Climate Change: What the Polls Really Show
Andrew Kohut, New York Times, 11 June 2010

News You Can Use

IPCC Exposed

From Climate Change: What Do We Know about the IPCC?, in press for Progress in Physical Geography, by the University of East Anglia’s Mike Hulme:

“Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous. That particular consensus judgment, as are many others in the IPCC reports, is reached by only a few dozen experts in the specific field of detection and attribution studies.”

Jason Scott Johnston, Professor and Director of the Program on Law, Environment and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, performed a cross examination of the IPCC’s evidence for anthropogenic climate change, and concluded:

“on virtually every major issue in climate change science, the [reports of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and other summarizing work by leading climate establishment scientists have adopted various rhetorical strategies that seem to systematically conceal or minimize what appear to be fundamental scientific uncertainties or even disagreements.”

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Democrats Can’t Find the Votes

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) held the second meeting of his Democratic caucus on Thursday to try to hammer out a deal on an anti-energy and/or energy rationing bill to bring to the Senate floor in July.  Little progress was made beyond the fact that everyone seems to agree that they cannot round up the sixty votes needed to pass a cap-and-trade bill such as Senator John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) American Power Act.  One idea being considered is to replace the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill passed by the House on June 26, 2009 with some place-holder provisions, pass that on the Senate floor, and then hold it until after the election when a conference committee could then put an energy-rationing bill together during a lame-duck session.  Perhaps enough defeated Democrats (who no longer need to worry about the interests of their States but are now interested in their next job in the administration or as lobbyists) would then be willing to vote for it to reach sixty votes.  This is possible-in fact, we have learned that anything is possible in a lame-duck session-but not easy to achieve.

Obama Fails To Convince

President Barack Obama gave a nationally-televised speech from the Oval Office on Tuesday on the BP oil leak in the Gulf and the need to create a new clean-energy economy that will get us off oil.  Like most of Obama’s speeches, it was articulate without being intellectually coherent or persuasive.  Media commentators were uniformly negative in their reviews.  The most perceptive was a video compilation by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show of eight presidents beginning with Nixon vowing to get the U. S. off oil.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.

In the News

UVA’s Defense of Mann: Back-off, He’s a Scientist
Chris Horner, Pajamas Media, 4 June 2010

EPA Puts Ideology ahead of Common Sense
Washington Examiner editorial, 4 June 2010

Carbon Offsets Deal Hit by Bribery Allegations
Michael Peel & Fiona Harvey, Financial Times, 4 June 2010

Another Reason To Nix the Endangerment Finding
Marlo Lewis, OpenMarket.org, 3 June 2010

Sinking Climate Change
Cal Thomas, Washington Examiner, 3 June 2010

Kerry’s Big Business Buyoff
William Yeatman & Jeremy Lott, American Spectator, 3 June 2010

The Death Spiral for Climate Alarmism Continues
Kenneth P. Green, MasterResource.org, 2 June 2010

The Lessons of the GM Bankruptcy
Paul Ingrassia, Wall Street Journal, 1 June 2010

The West’s Wrong Turn on Natural Resources
Joseph Sternberg, Wall Street Journal, 1 June 2010

UVA, Cuccinelli: Chilling
Richmond Times Dispatch editorial, 30 May 2010

News You Can Use

Tuvalu Is Growing

Tuvalu has been the face of small island nation states during international negotiations for a climate treaty. In 2003, for example, Tuvalu’s prime minister earned headlines by presenting the United Nations with a bill for the damages caused to small islands by rising sea-levels. So it should come as a great relief to the people of Tuvalu that 86% of the islands that comprise the country are growing thanks to sediment and coral accretion, according to a study this week from the New Scientist.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

President Pitches a Climate/BP Bill

President Barack Obama renewed his call for comprehensive energy-rationing legislation in a speech Wednesday in Pittsburgh.  The President argued that BP’s leaking deep sea oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was another compelling reason for passing such legislation in order to get the country off foreign-sorry, domestically-produced-oil.

Obama admitted that “the votes may not be there now, but I intend to find them in the coming months” in the Senate to pass the Kerry-Lieberman bill.  “I will continue to make the case for a clean energy future wherever and whenever I can.  I will work with anyone to get this done. And we will get this done.”

Politico then reported Thursday morning that the White House is planning a big push for energy-rationing in the Senate after the financial regulation bill is signed into law, which they think will happen around the Fourth of July.  Mike Allen, Jake Sherman, and Tim Alberta further reported that “the strategy now will be to include climate provisions in a BP SPILL BILL tightening industry controls, on the theory the bill will be hard to oppose.”

This is interesting, if true, but adding unpopular cap-and-trade or similar provisions to reduce energy supplies and raise energy prices is going to be a heavy weight on any bill, no matter how popular it is.  One problem with trying to take political advantage of the BP oil leak is that the worse it gets, the more it makes Obama look like an ineffectual leader and thereby weakens him politically.

This is not to say that I think this is fair to the President.  The leak is BP’s fault, and BP’s unpreparedness to stop it before it became a disaster is shameful.

Murkowski Update

Congress has been away on the Memorial Day recess this week.  On Thursday, June 10, the Senate is scheduled to debate and vote on Senator Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) Resolution of Disapproval of the EPA’s Endangerment Finding.  I still think it’s going to be a very close vote, although the numbers may shift after it’s clear whether it’s going to pass or fail.  How a number of Democratic Senators from heartland States are going to vote is still unknown.  It was reported this week that a consortium of environmental pressure groups was going to run several hundred thousand dollars of radio and television advertising opposing S. J. Res. 26 in the States of some of these Senators.

Across the States

Connecticut

Connecticut Governor M.Jodi Rell (D) this week vetoed a “green” energy bill, the ironically titled Act for Reducing Electricity Costs and Promoting Renewable Energy, because she feared it would raise electricity costs thereby further weakening and already weak economy. The Governor also expressed displeasure with the process by which the bill passed in the state Legislature. The Democratic-controlled House introduced the bill at 3:00 A.M on the last day of the legislative calendar, and it passed at 6:00 A.M.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.

In the News

States Divided Over New EPA Rules
Shannon Goessling, Washington Times, 21 May 2010

Cap-and-Trade Magic Show
James Valvo, Washington Times, 21 May 2010

Inequitable in Ecuador
Quin Hillyer, American Spectator, 21 May 2010

Electric Dreamin’
Henry Payne, Planet Gore, 21 May 2010

Scientists Scramble To Address Radio Campaign
Stephen Dinan, Washington Times, 20 May 2010

The Green Jobs Myth
Investor’s Business Daily editorial, 20 May 2010

The EPA’s Shocking Power Grab
George Allen & Marlo Lewis, Forbes, 18 May 2010

UVA’s Dishonorable Double Standard
Barbara Hollingsworth, Washington Examiner, 18 May 2010

Climate Policy Needs a Team “B”
David Schnare, MasterResource.org, 18 May 2010

News You Can Use

Maybe It’s the Sun

Despite the absence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, Jupiter’s climate changed drastically this month when a giant belt of clouds circling the planet mysteriously disappeared. As noted by the BlogProf, this follows recent discoveries that Triton, a moon of Neptune, is rapidly warming and that Mars’s polar ice caps are evaporating.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Murkowski Resolution Debate Heats Up

In a story in Environment and Energy Daily (reprinted on the NY Times’s web site), Darren Samuelsohn reports that Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) predicts the Murkowski resolution of disapproval of the EPA’s endangerment finding will pass the Senate when it is brought to the floor for a vote next week.  “I think it will pass,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “There are a lot of people who will be in the camp of, ‘We should do it, not the EPA.'”

I think that is a sensible observation.  Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is among those who favor reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but who do not want it to be done by using the Clean Air Act.  That is because she has concluded that applying the Clean Air Act to carbon dioxide emissions will result in a regulatory nightmare and wreck the economy (which is also sensible).  This conclusion is gaining ground as Members of Congress look at the issue.  Therefore, I do not think the Senate vote is merely “symbolic,” as political commentator Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute told Evan Lehmann and Jessica Leber of Climate Wire (also reprinted on the New York Times’s web site).

My guess is that Murkowski’s resolution, S. J. Res. 26, will pass narrowly and that pressure will then build on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to schedule a House vote.  One of the interesting results of the congressional primary elections so far is that strong opponents of cap-and-trade in both parties are doing well.  Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com has noticed the trend, as has the Huffington Post.  Democratic House Members worried about their re-election may plead with Pelosi that they need a vote against EPA regulation to take back home. An indication that Pelosi may already be feeling some heat is that this week she said, as reported by Bob Cusack and Ben Geman in the Hill, that Congress should legislate global warming policy rather than let EPA regulate.

This week nineteen free market and conservative non-profit groups sent a joint letter to Senators in support of the Murkowski resolution.  It was written and organized by my CEI colleague, Marlo Lewis.  Marlo and former Virginia Governor and Senator George Allen also published an excellent op-ed on the Forbes Magazine web site that explains why stopping EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide emissions is a constitutional as well as economic imperative.

Several environmental groups have been running ads against the Murkowski resolution.  Americans for Prosperity has held a bunch of rallies in support of the resolution in the States of key Senators over the past few weeks.  This week Freedom Action (of which I am director) started running radio ads in six States-Virginia, West Virginia, North Dakota, New Mexico, Montana, New Mexico, and Alaska-which tie the ClimateGate scandal to the EPA Endangerment Finding and urge listeners to e-mail their Senators.

Obama Wants To Raise CAFE Again

President Barack Obama today issued a memorandum directing federal agencies to develop tougher new fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks beginning in the 2017 model year and to develop fuel economy standards for medium and big trucks for the first time. This follows the new standards announced in April that will begin with the 2012 model year.  It’s not clear to me that consumers are going to want to buy the models that the Congress and the Obama Administration have decreed will be offered in 2012, but the automakers are now resigned to taking orders from their federal masters rather than their customers. My prediction is that another massive bailout of the automakers is inevitable.

“Invaluable” Climate Reports Released

The National Academies of Science this week released three reports prepared by the National Research Council that endorse the scientific case for global warming alarmism and claim that it is urgent that the federal government adopt mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Former New York Times environment reporter Andrew Revkin on his New York Times blog called the reports “invaluable.”  Yeah, I’ve got a lot of invaluable junk stored in my basement, too, that perhaps I can interest Andy in buying.

The fact is that these three reports are put-up jobs arranged by NAS President Ralph Cicerone to counter the damage done by the Climategate scandal.  I have seen enough of Dr. Cicerone in action to know that he is a political conman first and a scientist second.  I wouldn’t trust him to give a straight answer on the time of day.  The carefully-chosen members of the NRC committees that wrote the reports are mostly committed advocates of alarmism and energy rationing policies.  Mark Landsbaum of the Orange County Register agrees.

4th International Conference on Climate Change

I was one of 700 people attending the Heartland Institute’s fourth International Conference on Climate Change this week.  As with the first three conferences, Joe Bast, James Taylor, Nikki Comerford, and the Heartland staff put together a well-run conference with many outstanding speakers.  All of the keynote and panel presentations are available on video here.

There are a number of famous names among the speakers who gave excellent talks-Richard Lindzen, Bob Carter, Steve McIntyre, Nils-Axel Morner, Ian Plimer, and others whose talks I missed (which is the problem with having four concurrent sessions).  One less famous speaker, whose talk I recommend watching, is Willis Eschenbach.

Across the States

West Virginia

On Tuesday night, the Environmental Protection Agency held a public hearing in Charleston, West Virginia, on its proposed veto of a Clean Water Act permit for Spruce Fork 1 coal mine in Logan County, which is already operating. The EPA is exercising this authority for the first time ever, in order to protect an insect that isn’t even an endangered species. More than 800 people attended, and scores of miners, small businessmen, and community activists gave testimony urging the EPA to spare their livelihoods. The EPA’s veto would result in the direct loss of 250 jobs paying an average of $62,000, and would also deprive the Logan County school system of more than $17 million annually.

Around the World

Spain

Since becoming President, Barrack Obama has cited the “success” of Spain’s green energy policies eight times, most recently in Illinois, three weeks ago. So it was major news when Professor Gabriel Calzada, an economist at King Juan Carlos University, released a study in 2009 concluding that Spain’s ultra-wasteful green energy subsidies were killing 2.2 jobs for every job they created. After CEI’s Chris Horner broke news of the study in the U.S., the Obama administration commissioned a hatchet job analysis to discredit Calzada’s work. This week, Professor Calzada was vindicated when a government report was leaked conceding that the green energy subsidies are unsustainable. The headline of the Spanish daily La Gaceta says it all: “Spain Admits That the Green Economy as Sold to Obama Is a Disaster.”

UNFCCC

Bloomberg reported this week that Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican diplomat, will succeed Yvo de Boer as the head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on July 1st. Soon after the announcement, she told reporters that she is confident that a legally binding, international greenhouse gas emissions reductions treaty can be reached in 3 years. We’ve heard that before. In 2007, de Boer championed the “Bali Roadmap,” which was supposed to lead to a climate treaty at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC last December in Copenhagen, Denmark. Of course, the Copenhagen Climate Conference foundered amid recriminations over how to share the $45 trillion price tag for a global climate treaty.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.

In the News

Are We Listening Yet?
Chris Horner, American Spectator, 7 May 2010

Drill, Baby, Still
Investor’s Business Daily editorial, 7 May 2010

A Positive Human Influence on Global Warming?
Robert Bradley, MasterResource.org, 6 May 2010

A Sudden Acceleration of Regulation
Henry Payne, Planet Gore, 6 May 2010

A Gush to Judgment
Iain Murray, Washington Examiner, 5 May 2010

EU Investigates Cap-and-Trade Fraud
Leigh Phillips, EU Observer, 5 May 2010

Keep The Lights On
Peter Ferrara, American Spectator, 5 May 2010

The Costs of Carbon Controls
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 4 May 2010

Gore: From Sanctimonious to Ridiculous
Victor David Hanson, PJM, 2 May 2010

News You Can Use

CEOs: California Has Worst Business Climate

American CEOs consider California to be the worst place to do business in the country, according to a new poll by Chief Executive Magazine. Not coincidentally, the Golden State is also the national leader in onerous environmental regulations, including AB 32, and high energy prices.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Update on Murkowski’s Disapproval Resolution

Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has at least until the Memorial Day recess to offer her resolution under the Congressional Review Act to disapprove the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare.  S. J. Res. 26 has 41 co-sponsors, including three Democrats-Lincoln (Ark.), Landrieu (La.), and Nelson (Neb.).  Nine more votes are needed to get to the 51 needed for passage.

It appears likely that Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine will vote against the resolution and that Scott Brown, the new Republican Senator from Massachusetts, will vote for it.  That means Murkowski needs to find eight more Democrats.  The most likely are from coal and manufacturing States.  If the White House sees it as a threat, then they may lean pretty hard on some of these Democrats to vote no.  On the other hand, Murkowski has been assiduously lobbying her colleagues for months.  My guess is that it will be very close, but the resolution will pass.  The vote could occur any time in the next three weeks.

If the Senate passes S. J. Res. 26, then the House can take up the resolution at any time.  The House Democratic leadership will not bring it to the floor, which means that the only way to get it to the floor for a vote is through a discharge petition signed by a majority of House Members.  There are two identical House resolutions of disapproval.  H. J. Res. 76 was introduced by Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) and now has 47 co-sponsors.  H. J. Res. 77 was introduced by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) and now has 115 co-sponsors.  That’s a start, but still a long way from 218 signatures on a discharge petition.

Graham Clears Everything Up

The picaresque saga featuring Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) grows ever more farcical.  Kerry this week once again promised to release a draft of their energy-rationing bill next Wednesday, with or without Graham’s support.  Graham’s comments have been all over the map.  He said that there was still a chance this year to get the sixty votes necessary to pass the bill.  Then he said that the bill was dead for this year.  Most recently, he said this in an interview with Environment and Energy Daily: “There is no bipartisan support for a cap-and-trade bill based on global warming. There is bipartisan support in the future, at the right time and in the right circumstances, for an energy independence legislation, green job creation and clean air.”

BP’s big oil spill off the Louisiana coast complicates the issue.  On the one hand, Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) announced that he would oppose any bill that included more offshore oil production.  Several other Senators on the left would probably do the same.  On the other hand, several Senators in the middle have said they will not support an energy-rationing bill unless it has more offshore oil production in it.  What I think Kerry should do is what he did with cap-and-trade, which he renamed “pollution reduction and investment,” and the gasoline tax, which he renamed “linked fee.”  He should call it the Offshore Wind, Solar, and Other Energy Title.  That way no one will know that it’s about offshore oil.

Across the States

Anti-AB32 Initiative Will Proceed to November Ballot

California voters will have the choice whether to proceed with costly carbon controls in the midst of an economic depression. On Monday, The California Jobs Initiative submitted 800,000 signatures of support for a ballot initiative that would delay implementation of AB 32, California’s 2006 global warming law, until the State’s unemployment declines to 5.5% (it currently stands at 12.8%). That’s more than double the number of signatures required to get on November’s ballot.

Coal State Democrats Protest the EPA Coal Crackdown

Representatives Nick J. Rahall (D-WV), Alan B. Mollohan (D-WV), and Rick Boucher (D-Va.) yesterday sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson expressing their concerns over the EPA’s plans to shut down surface coal mining in Appalachia (and the leading revenue generator in West Virginia) in order to protect the mayfly, an insect that isn’t even an endangered species. In fact, the EPA established bug-protections so stringent that they would outlaw almost all construction near an intermittent or ephemeral stream, but the EPA is trying to target the regulations solely on Appalachian coal mining. Reps. Rahall, Mollohan, and Boucher asked Administrator Jackson why “a hardrock mining operation in California, or a shopping mall construction project in New Jersey…should not be held to the same standard.” Good question.

Around the World

Obama Loses a Clean Energy Talking Point

Chris Horner, from The Daily Caller

Spain’s socialist Zapatero government has laid the groundwork for abandoning its vaunted “green jobs” schemes, admitting in an official if not yet released document the damning criticisms levied by an academic team. This is very bad news for the Obama administration whose leader on eight separate occasions instructed us to “think about what’s happening in countries like Spain” if we wanted to see his model and vision for a “green economy.” He would launch America into a new era of prosperity premised in “new technologies” like windmills-yes, he actually said that. Read more here.

UK Elections: The Greens Gain, a Nation Loses

Iain Murray

Britain’s inconclusive election merely reaffirmed that the nation is going to go further down the road of unsustainable energy policy.  Not only was the Green party leader, Caroline Lucas, elected to be the party’s first ever MP in the former Conservative stronghold of Brighton, but millionaire playboy Zac Goldsmith was elected nominally under the Conservative banner but stressed he was in Parliament to work on green issues.  Goldsmith has proved extremely influential on party leader David Cameron, and the Conservatives’ manifesto (platform) took a very alarmist line on climate and energy issues.

At time of writing, there are also suggestions that David Cameron’s outreach to the Liberal Democrats to join a coalition government includes further concessions on a low-carbon economy, although it is hard to see how much further the Conservatives can go.  With a mounting public sector debt crisis the size of Greece’s, a Prime Minister David Cameron and his adviser Goldsmith might well see their dreams of emissions reduction realized through the simple expedience of economic collapse.  It is certainly hard to see how Britain can recover economically with the albatross of decarbonization hanging around her neck.

Green China?

Proponents of cap-and-trade have taken to arguing that climate change legislation is an economic necessity because the U.S. risks falling behind in a global, zero-sum competition for green industrial supremacy. The influential columnist Thomas Friedman, for example, has prophesied that future historians will associate the 21st century’s first decade with China’s “Green Leap Forward.” He also has warned that the Chinese are going to “clean our clock” unless the Congress passes a cap-and-trade energy-rationing scheme. This is ridiculous: Green energy is mere window dressing in China, which is building a new coal fired power plant every week to meet its growing energy needs. This reality was reinforced today, when the New York Times reported that China’s “surging demand for power from oil and coal has led to the largest six-month increase in the tonnage of human generated greenhouse gases ever by a single country.”

Subprime Carbon

Julie Walsh

The European criminal intelligence agency (Europol) has said that as much as 90 percent of the entire market volume on emissions exchanges was caused by fraudulent activity.  Examples of fraud abound.

Worse, Mark Shapiro in a Harper’s Magazine article entitled “Conning the Climate” details the factors in carbon trading that make fraud inherent in the system:

If cap-and-trade in the United States were to become reality along the lines of proposals now before Congress, up to 2 billion of the new credits would be drawn from carbon offsets, potentially increasing the worldwide supply of such credits by a factor of seven.

The United Nations has certified twenty-six firms worldwide-in U.N. lingo, Designated Operational Entities (DOEs)-to “validate” emissions offsets and then to “verify,” often years later, that those reductions actually occurred.

The developers of emissions-offset projects are by and large funded or owned outright by multinational firms, particularly financial houses such as JP Morgan Chase, which owns the biggest developer in the world, Eco-Securities, and Goldman Sachs, which has a significant interest in the largest U.S.-based developer, Blue Source.

Far from being independent third-party auditors, the DOEs get paid by these very developers and have to compete vigorously to win business.

But only 4 percent of requests for verification of offsets since 2005 have been rejected.

A Berlin think tank, the Öko-Institut, conducted a  review of the validation process on behalf of World Wildlife Fund International and concluded that none of the top five validations scored higher than a D in an A-to-F grading scale.

Mark Shapiro met with Mark Trexler, the director of Climate Strategies and Markets for DNV (one of the two main companies in the carbon offset-verification business), who said that the reality is that everyone- emitting businesses, carbon-project developers, entrepreneurs in the developing world, and governments-has a vested interest in validating as many projects as possible.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.